Excellent tonic for those fans of the popular pundit (The Levelling Wind, 1994, etc.) who prefer to ingest his brand of conservatism in large doses. Large, in this case, means 150 essays unlinked by organizing themes or extended analyses. Regardless, in the Newsweek and Washington Post political columnist's latest musings about recent events, books, and people, he consistently delivers what his readers have come to expect: a principled partisanship leavened by wit, informed by a knowledge of history and philosophy, and strengthened by his choice to favor argument over rant. Nevertheless, finding novel opportunities to cast aspersions on liberals is a primary purpose (and an abiding amusement) for Will. Who else would extend an opinion that ``liberalism, as is well-known, is not fond of fun'' into an essay/obituary for the father of the Corvette? And yet Will resists the recently popular pabulum decreeing that liberals are always wrong (and probably evil), while conservatives are the miraculous gift of a blessed creator. By recognizing the tensions between capitalism and claims of individual rights on the one hand, and the pull of tradition, social order, and community on the other, the author confronts American conservatism with an honest and circumspect assessment of its flaws, as well as its advantages. In the longest and weightiest contribution to the volume, Will struggles with a ``cultural contradiction'' facing contemporary conservatives: It is not reasonable to resolutely oppose government when true conservatism stands for an order in which government is required. Moreover, simply to promote an alternative policy agenda would distinguish conservatives from liberals only by the particular interests they happened to serve. For Will, conservatism must rise above the commonplaces of the current Conservative Revolution. Vintage Will. One can only hope his work will inspire serious thought—and not just squeals of pleasure—from his like- minded colleagues. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 12, 1997
ISBN: 0-684-82562-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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